Watch proposed congressional maps take shape across NC

After a panel of federal judges earlier this month ruled two of North Carolina's U.S. House districts unconstitutional, state Republican lawmakers spent most of last week hammering out the details of a wholly new congressional map. Now you can see just how stark those changes are.

Posted 5:09 p.m. Feb 25, 2016 — Updated 6:56 p.m. Jul 13, 2018

North Carolina congressional maps from 2011 compared to the 2016 proposal (Animation courtesy of Noah Veltman, WNYC)

RALEIGH, N.C. — After a panel of federal judges earlier this month ruled two of North Carolina's 13 U.S. House districts unconstitutional, state Republican lawmakers spent most of last week hammering out the details of a wholly new congressional map.

Now you can see just how stark those changes are.

Noah Veltman, a journalist on the WNYC data news team, used map files provided by the General Assembly to animate the differences in the previous map, drawn by Republican lawmakers in 2011, and the current proposal, which is still awaiting approval by the panel of federal judges.

Even before the 2011 redistricting, the state's jagged, sprawling and sometimes bewildering congressional shapes had long been criticized as a textbook example of gerrymandering. Proponents of the 2016 map point out that it splits only 13 counties across multiple districts, a reduction of two-thirds.

But the proposal does have its critics: The state chapter of the NAACP is asking the federal panel to throw out the new map, arguing it still disproportionately packs minority voters into three congressional districts.

The code for Veltman's animation, which is available online, uses a Javascript visualization library called D3.

Have more questions about how the proposed redistricting will affect you? Check out our Q&A on the topic.

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